15 dumbest patients that doctors have to deal with…

“I’m never going to have a baby because the hospitals don’t wash them anymore.” She’s 30.

I once had a 20 year old female patient who didn’t know that having sex would lead to pregnancy. She had no idea.

After looking at the patients chart and seeing she had diabetes. Me: Do you have any medical conditions? Patient: No. Me: Are you sure, you’ve never been told you have any diseases? Patient: Never. Me: What medications do you take? Patient: Insulin… for my diabetes

A middle aged lady in the operating theater once told us at he last minute (as she was being wheeled in) that she’s allergic to latex. Everyone freaks out so much of the stuff we use in the theater has latex in it, so we take her to the latex free theater and do her surgery there. When she’s in recovery and awake. I ask what reaction she has to latex. “I just don’t really like the sound the latex gloves make, dear”. I just turned around and walked out.

“No, my fiancee and I don’t want our daughter to have any of the vaccines, vitamin K shot or antibiotic eye ointment. It’s poison. Poking her with the needle is worse than the ‘cold’ she’d get with out the ‘poison’.” He then drove his newborn daughter and fiancee home in a car that absolutely reeked of weed and cigarettes.

20-something year old patient comes to ER, chief complaint on the board is “private.” This should be good. Go in, he is visibly depressed and sad. Tells a story about how he slept with a woman, didn’t use protection, and after he noticed she had a plastic box on her.” When she told him it was an insulin pump for diabetes he was mortified. Came in immediately to be tested for diabetes.

“I had asthma when I was a child, so stop patronizing me and telling me how to raise my daughter just because you think yo’re smarter than me.” Leaves hospital. Back in hospital two hours later; six year old daughter in respiratory failure and admitted to ICU.

“Don’t eat or drink anything after midnight” before his 3 year old daughter’s surgery the next morning (tonsils and adenoids). While intubating his daughter the next morning, she vomited rambled eggs, causing her to aspirate them into her lungs. Her heart stopped, and I did chest compression on her for 25 minutes. We got her back, aborted the surgery, and transferred her to pediatric ICU on a ventilator. Her father’s response.. “She said she was hungry. I thought you were being too hard on her. I must have been something you did to her.”

Patient had to be told that the reason her son was getting sick at school every day was because she was packing him peanut butter sandwiches and he was allergic to peanuts. She honestly didn’t know that was an ingredient, and he was in middle school and wasn’t bright enough to realize it himself.

Had a lady measure her baby’s temperature by preheating the oven and putting one hand in front of it while the other hand was on the baby’s forehead. She told the nurse her baby’s fever was about 250 degrees.

A woman fed her three month old dog every few days for no other reason that she thought a dog should only eat that often. Coming for hypoglycemia (of course). The nurse who spoke with her has no patience for this kind of jacked ignorance, and actually shouted at her “DO YOU EAT EVERY THREE DAYS!?”

Once had a patient who was prescribed an inhaler for his cat allergy. He cam back a week later saying he was none the better. Turns out he was spraying the inhaler on his cat.

My favorite was when someone was prescribed estrogen patches and told to stick on patch on herself every other day. At the next followup she said she didn’t like the patches because she’d been “running out of space” I didn’t think of clarify to her that she should have been placing a new patch and removing the one from yesterday each day. Very amusing. She indeed was covered in sticky patches.

Mom brought her kids to the ER after they ate all of their Halloween candy because they had tummy aches. They were still eating them when they were in the exam room. I had to explain her that they need to cut back on the candy and she looked at me like I had three heads.

There was this lady who had diabetes and her foot was necrotic. The doctor told her she was going to have to have it amputated, and she said “No, Jesus will heal it for me” (or something like that) The doctor looked at her and said”Mam, you have maggots eating your foot. Jesus wants you to get it amputated.”